Page 24 of Pipe Dreams
“I...” She held her breath. “I moved back into the old house today.”
“What?” She replayed the sentence again in her head, but it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t meanhisold house.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “I love you. Hell, I’ve always loved you. But my family needs me right now, and there isn’t any other way.”
“They... what?” she asked stupidly. “Mike, you’re not making a lot of sense. I need to see you. Where are you?”
“No,” he said haltingly. “My mind is made up. Shelly is sick.”
“She’s sick?” Lauren parroted like an idiot.
“Yeah. She’s getting chemotherapy now. Elsa is all freaked out.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
That’s when it started to sink in. This phone call wasn’t just some kind of crazy misunderstanding. He was serious. And he’d said he was leaving her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This is gonna be so hard, but I have to do it.”
“Youdon’t, though,” she argued. “We could change our plans...” His recent silences when she wanted to discuss apartment-hunting suddenly made a hell of a lot more sense.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
There was a click, and that was really it. Lauren was left sitting there on the LIRR, her phone still pressed to her cheek.
She had been completely blindsided.
Not only had that phone call meant a break-up, but it had also clinched Lauren’s exit from the world of professional hockey. She no longer worked in the team’s office. And after Mike dumped her, she stopped reading the sports section and she never set foot near a rink unless her boss required it. (He usually hadn’t, thankfully.)
For two years her relationship with hockey had been severed. Yet here she was again, watching game five of a play-offs series, in a posh corporate box beside her boss.
And so tense she was practically crawling out of her skin.
As she’d done for games one through four, Lauren had begun the evening assuring herself that she didn’t care who won. But the red-blooded energy of eighteen thousand fans in one room was too much for even Lauren to resist. Andmuch like games one through four, by the third period she held her water bottle with a white-knuckled grip, completely absorbed in the action down on the ice.
She’d forgotten how this felt—the excitement thumping through her chest as the fans stomped their feet.
“YEAH!” Nate stood up from his seat, along with eighteen thousand others, as forwards Beringer and Trevi raced down the ice, playing keep-away with the puck.
Beringer passed, and Trevi took a shot. Lauren’s heart leaped into her mouth. But it was just barely deflected by the D.C. goalie, damn it. Then Trevi was slammed into the boards by a defenseman, a blatant hit from behind.
WHAT?Lauren’s inner hockey fan shrieked. “Nopenalty?That’sbullshit!”
Her heart banged inside her chest as the third period ground on, the score a 2–2 tie.
When there were only four minutes left in the game, everyone in the Bruisers’ box braced as a Washington player charged the net. Lauren leaned forward in her seat as Beacon dove into position, deflecting the puck. Another D.C. player zoomed in for the rebound, and there was a scrum in front of the net—pads and skates and sticks all scrapping for control.
Then an opposing player fell right onto Mike, knocking him down with such force that his shoulder unhooked the net from its peg into the ice.
Lauren stopped breathing.
The next few moments happened in slow motion. The offending player picked himself up off Beacon’s body, which wasn’t moving.
Get up!She commanded him silently. A whistle blew, and players and officials congregated.
Mike’s leg moved. But that was all.
